Alexandria

I wanted to like this, I loved The Wake, I liked Beast, and the pre-publication blurb made this sound like a return to form. It isn't, it's an idea that could have worked well handled poorly. There are far better versions of this tale out there, such as Riddley Walker and Floodland, so seek them out instead.

I was disappointed in this final part of the trilogy. It didn't convince me. The future post-apocalypse world didn't make sense and unusually, I gave up. It is nowhere near as good as the previous two.

This is the third and concluding volume of a two millennia spanning trilogy, which started with ”The Wake” (Booker longlisted, Goldsmith shortlisted, Gordon Burn Prize winner) in 2014 and “Beast” in 2016.“The Wake” I found an outstanding novel. Set in 1066-1068 (ie around 1000 years ago) it featured Buccmaster, Lincolnshire landowner, and is effectively a tale of resistance to Norman invasion by someone though who was already set apart from his fellow fen dwellers by his following of the old gods and particularly his belief that he has been chosen and marked out by the legendary blacksmith Weland. Kingsnorth wrote at the time about the historical Anglo-Saxon legend of Wayland that he was from a “liminal territory, where magic meets metalwork ……….. a goldsmith with magical powers, he is enslaved by a greed-addled king, upon whom he wreaks a terrible, bloodthirsty revenge. …. His fires transform base metal into gold, the mundane into the magical, injustice into bloody revenge. Wayland is not just a smith. He is an alchemist.”The Wake is written in a “shadow tongue” – a version of Olde English updated to be readable but respecting many of the rules of that language“The Beast” I found a less convincing novel – set in our present time about a hermit Edward Buckmaster, obsessed with a with a beast (a large black cat) which he spots occasionally and decides to track. Language is important here – but rather than a language invention of Kingsnorth it seems that the ungrammatical, fractured English reflects more the increasing disassociation of Buckmaster from modern life and the increasing blurring of reality and dreams, consciousness and unconsciousness. It did have some common themes – particularly the rejection of a changed world, dreams and omens, a strong sense of the importance of the soul of the natural world, perhaps controversially the self-delusion/self-centredness of the main character.This the third novel – is set 1000 years in the future, and I feels much more of a return to “The Wake”The book is (like that one) set in the Fens.Wayland returns as a fundamental influence.The book also features a group looking to fundamentally remake the world and one looking to return it to an older way of life..It also features – at least at first - a different language. This is I think easier to follow than in “The Wake” and one that is perhaps more of a stripped down form of English with simplified spelling, reduced vocabulary and with (by our standards) tenses shifting fluidly, although interestingly with a heavy Anglo-Saxon influence (to a 21st Century reader it is the Anglo Saxon terms – particularly Wight for animal and Holt for wood – which initially jar. The language I think reflects the pared back nature of the lifestyle of the group with which the book starts, their reaching way back past the 21st Century for a lifestyle to emulate and their very different sense of time and space (with a quite respect for the circularity of nature replacing a fervent belief in the arrow of progress).The author himself has said “The first book, The Wake, explores cultural identity and roots. In that book, the central character’s stubborn refusal to surrender his very particular notion of what it means to be English in the face of unstoppable change leads to tragedy for everyone around him. Beast, the second novel, shifts from culture to the individual. What does it mean to be an individual mind in the world, what is the mind, can it be broken open and what lies outside it? Reality in that book is far from fixed. If The Wake is about the culture, and Beast is about the mind, Alexandria is about the body. The central conflict in this novel is between those who live determinedly within their given, natural forms, and those who seek to escape them through becoming “as Gods” and remaking reality to suit human desires. The struggle is between accepting limits and denying them in pursuit of our own divinity”.The start of the book, set in a post climate changed warmed Fens (where yams are gown) features a Fen dwelling community – the Order (later we find known as the Nitrian order).The Order believes in a kind of part animist, part Christian worldview – with a great Mother, with birds acting as messengers, confidants, advisors and dream gods (and with a symbolic series of poles each carved with the bird whose visit represents the year) - and live in a wooded cloister in a sustainable relationship with nature – one which acknowledges the needs of their bodies (they are for example far from vegetarians) but also respects those of the animals, trees and plants around them.Once their own number was much larger and they were part of a wider series of such communities – now their numbers have dwindled and they think they may be alone. The others seem to have been tempted away to join a mythical city called Alexandria and ruled over by Wayland – a City where it seems people are freed from the confines of their mortal bodies and given some form of disembodied mind immortality. Wayland even their own legends seem to say was some form of Artificial Intelligence developed by an increasingly rapacious mankind (for whom nature was no longer sufficient) who then, in their view, enslaved man and whose offer of transhumanism is one which should be resisted as effectively genocide on the human race.The community now is only the two designated elders “Father” and “Mother”, Sfia, her husband Nzil and precocious daughter El, Yyrvidian – the communities dreamer – and Lorenso (Sfia’s lover but also an agitator for the community to seek out Alexandria).While the community is prowled by a red stalker (an emissary of Wayland they believe come to tempt them away) – Yyrvidian has a dream of a swans (which points to the possible fulfillment of a 1000-year old prophecy of the downfall of Alexandria). Father and an increasingly dissatisfied Lorenso set off West to see what has happened.However both the two seekers and the even smaller community left behind are then more directly approached by the red stalker – who reveals himself in whatever form is necessary to each member to overcome their initial hostility and to allow him to reveal his true self (he is we find an intelligence called K put into an embodied form in the service of Wayland until he can harvest sufficient recruits for Alexandria) and to set out the real vision of Alexandria – the freeing of humanity from the confines of its bodily weaknesses and freeing the Earth from the consequences of mankind’s destructive bodily appetities.So we have the situation where both The Order and Alexandria agree on the problem – but not on the solution.I enjoyed some of the ways in which the two sides are contrasted:- In their language – I have already discussed the language of the Order, but K’s reports on his encounters with the Order are set out in what is very much 21st Century English – Kingsnorth I think indicating what side he thinks is currently dominating discourse in our present day- In their names. Alexandria is of course based on its Great Library – a collection of human minds rather than human written knowledge. And the Order is I assume named after the Christian monastic community in the Nitrian desert close to AlexandriaOverall I thought this was a superb continuation to “The Wake” and while I still have not fully processed the full role of “The Beast” (other than in the continuum of time) this remains a groundbreaking and hugely thought provoking trilogy.

This is a reasonably good yarn and readable story. It’s not really about the metaphysical city of Alexandria, but is about the small number of fully embodied humans still surviving outside Alexandria after ecological devastation. It’s the concluding volume of Paul Kingsnorth’s trilogy, in which he paints a very bleak picture of a brief human experience of Enlightenment and modernity.Kingsnorth’s polemic is powerfully expressed in the dialogue between agent K (is this Kingsnorth like K in Kafka?), and Lorenso (p195ff). Human physical desire, intellectual ability, and drive for domination led to a technology which killed the planet, and artificial intelligence which then dominated its human creator. Few survive the resulting global flood, itself a familiar story from antiquity. The Enlightenment failed because ‘reason cannot conquer millennia of animality’ (p288), a totally unsupported wild claim which trashes any possible objectivity of logic.Kingsnorth’s K argues that violence is the ever increasing tool of human expansion, a claim which is disputed by Steven Pinker’s data on the diminution of violence in human Enlightenment. There is much discussion on the physical/intellectual holism of humanity. Alexandria is entirely metaphysical, the ultimate expression of Platonic superiority of mind and spirit; those surviving outside are entirely driven by physicality of body, blood, and sex. Kingsnorth refuses to admit holistic humanity as both physical and metaphysical, whether by religion’s incarnation, or a philosophy of emergence. He allows human enlightenment no credit for its art, creativity, or virtue.Even as story, the novel ends weakly – Alexandria is simply switched off at some point without comment, making the whole read a disappointing piece of sci-fi.

I read and enjoyed The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth a number of years ago, finding the simulated Old English text very intriguing and atmospheric and providing immersion into the historical past. For some reason, I never got around to reading Beast, but my curiosity was aroused when I was recently given the chance to read the third book in the Buccmaster trilogy, Alexandria.Alexandria is set in the far future after an unspecified environmental calamity. Like The Wake, there is some alteration to standard English text to assist with the immersion into the time and place of the story. Also, like The Wake a band of people exist in the landscape, trying to resist and avoid a sinister power which seeks to destroy them.There are a lot of thought-provoking themes running through this book: the warlike nature of man, the need for and effect of love and what it means to be embodied as a human being. I found it an interesting and worthwhile read. I now plan to go back and read Beast to finish off the trilogy (albeit in an unorthodox order).Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.